Young albino Japanese/American tattoo artist Pearl Tanaka foils a Yakuza hit and is forced to become their hired gun to pay off her debt. Shenanigans ensue!
Pearl, Volume 1 is the weakest of Brian Bendis’ new Jinxworld titles at DC. Bendis is usually a clear storyteller but I found his story in Pearl to be murky at best.
Why did Pearl foil the Yakuza hit in the opening scene – because she liked the boy target she’d just met? Why was the boy a target in the first place?
Why would the Yakuza make her their hired gun – if her targets are important, why would they expect her to take them out; does she have special assassin training? Because we don’t see her go through anything like that here. But if she’s made an assassin as a way of killing her indirectly, why not kill her outright? Because even if the Yakuza clan doesn’t kill her directly, as some kind of loyalty to her family’s existing mob connections, they at least put her in a position where she was likely to be killed, which is basically the same thing anyway. But if she is the daughter of a former powerful mob boss, why not let her off the hook entirely as a show of respect? Was the kid target really that important?
I didn’t get into the story at all nor did I think much of the characters. I suppose Mr Miike, the mob boss, had some cool Tony Stark-esque dialogue but the Endo Twins I just found insufferably idiotic. They’ve got the Bendis dialoguerrea and none of their copious blathering is funny or relevant. The only interesting aspect of Pearl’s character is that her tattoos are invisible until she’s all het up and the blood makes them show. Otherwise she’s just glum and charmless for the most part. She wants to keep her tattoo parlour, currently owned by the mob – but then why does she go around foiling mob hits then!?
However the book does have the best art I’ve seen yet from Michael Gaydos. It’s very photorealistic – quite often it looks like an Instagram filter! – and extremely skilful. The tattoo designs were very imaginative and the range of styles incorporated – classic Japanese art, psychedelic - was impressive.
The art doesn’t really make up for the poor writing though. Pearl, Volume 1 is too contrived and convoluted a story – tattoo me unimpressed!
No comments:
Post a Comment